Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium brings together cutting-edge research on teaching tacts and exploring naming relations in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Each study highlights advances methods for improving communication and language skills in children with ASD through targeted interventions. First, Megan Ruffo will present a study focused on teaching tactile tacts to children with ASD, exploring tactile-based learning strategies and their effectiveness in enhancing verbal behavior. Second, Meral Koldas will discuss research on teaching reciprocal tacting to children with autism, investigating how reciprocal interactions can be used to improve back-and-forth communication. Third, Lauren Schexnayder will present findings on emergent listener and tact relations among children using speech-generating devices, examining the development of these skills in children who use alternative communication devices. Forth, Victoria Verdun will explore bi-directional naming and the emergence of listener and tact relations, shedding light on how these relations develop and impact language acquisition in children with ASD. Finally, Judah Axe will conclude the symposium with a discussion on the implications of these studies and potential future research directions.

Practitioners, professionals, BCBAs, BCBA-Ds, RBTs.

There is limited research on teaching non-visual tacts (e.g., auditory, olfactory, tactile) to children with autism spectrum disorder, and minimal current research on tact training for tactile stimuli. In the current study, four children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder were taught to verbally tact and one participant to tact via their speech generating device, tactile stimuli in the compound condition (i.e., tactile stimuli presented with visual cues) in a multiple probe design across stimuli sets. Throughout teaching in the compound condition, we conducted isolated probes (i.e., tactile stimuli presented without visual cues). Results showed that the compound training condition was effective in teaching tacts of tactile stimuli to the three participants who have completed the study thus far. In addition, the compound training condition also appears to be effective in teaching tacts of tactile stimuli to one ongoing participant who is completing the study via a speech generating device. Furthermore, generalization occurred in the isolated context in the absence of any programmed prompting for all participants. This study emphasizes the need to implement training procedures for tacts of tactile stimuli and stimuli of other modalities to children with autism both verbally and with speech generating devices. Keywords: Tact, tactile stimuli, autism, verbal behavior, labeling, speech generating device

Expanding tact repertoires in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often a central focus of early intensive behavioral intervention due to its critical role in language development. While there are empirically validated teaching strategies for increasing tact repertoires in learners with ASD, strategies to support the use of acquired tacts within a shared social experience is an area that is less established. This study addressed that gap by employing a multiple probe design across participants to teach three children with ASD to engage in reciprocal tacting, where they not only labeled items themselves but also responded to tacts emitted by a social partner by using discrete trial teaching (DTT). The results showed that reciprocal tacting with a social partner was successfully established across all participants. Importanty, after reciprocal tact training, all participants generalized the skill of tacting in a novel and naturalistic social experience. The findings contribute to the limited but growing body of research on promoting socially reciprocal verbal behaviors in children with ASD, which is crucial for improving their social communication outcomes.

For some autistic children, the emergence of untrained skills is absent or delayed; and when this occurs, language must be taught directly, and the overall rate of learning can be significantly impacted. A line of research has assessed the efficiency of teaching language skills by measuring the emergence of untrained skills (e.g., Delfs et al., 2014; Conine et al. 2021). One general finding from this research is that tact instruction is more efficient than listener instruction (e.g., Frampton et al., 2017). However, this research has not yet included nonvocal participants who communicate via augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) modalities such as a speech-generating device (SGD). Given that a recent review noted that the effectiveness of intervention with learners who use an SGD may differ significantly for certain operants (Muharib et al., 2023), further investigation with these learners is warranted. Participants were taken through a series of training comparisons wherein one set was assigned to listener training and another set was assigned to tact training, and probes were conducted to test for the emergence of the untrained operant. Results provide preliminary information on the efficiency of tact and listener instruction with participants who communicate via an SGD.